Sometimes there’s nothing better than a walk together

More than 30 community leaders and organizations representing all sides of the deep bore tunnel issue came together in the sun Friday for a hands-on tour in Uptown (lower Queen Anne) to walk together, block by block, and gain a genuine understanding of the proposed tunnel design issues and implications.

How and where will folks from Queen Anne, Magnolia, Ballard, Interbay and Fremont enter the tunnel? How and where will they exit? What about huge community events at the Seattle Center? Will traffic be a nightmare or is there hope? Is the Mercer Street project aligned with the larger strategy or not? Will freight and commercial vehicles have equal access along the key arterials? Will parking along congested streets be changed?

The thoughtful, insightful, tough and focused questions rattled on for two hours in the hot sun while traffic engineers from the city and state did their best to address the issues head on. Many questions don’t yet have answers and the public’s participation is essential to get it right.

The North Portal Working Group, a gathering of community organizations representing the neighborhoods of Queen Anne, Magnolia and Ballard, has been actively engaged in tackling these issues for months. Still, as a legislator, I felt a sense of personal frustration when looking only at maps and charts that didn’t help me get my hands around the details of these vital and important design issues. We must ensure traffic flow and access from the neighborhoods. Period. I wanted a better understanding of every turn, every new signal, the exact location of each aspect of the new tunnel not only to answer constituent questions but to make more informed decisions about the impact on our neighborhoods. In organizing the tour, Sen. Kohl-Welles, Rep. Dickerson and I felt it would help elevate the level of dialogue about the issues of congestion, traffic flow and access, and it did.

It’s easy to roll our collective eyes at the “Seattle Process,” and I’ve made my share of disparaging remarks about how long it takes us as a community to make bold decisions. But the walking tour, in providing a common understanding among previously warring parties, was a symbolic representation of the genuine and meaningful value of a decision making process that seeks common ground. Robert Moses, the famed New York City infrastructure czar who pushed through massive projects without a word edgewise from the community, would have scoffed at our community walk today. Standing on the street corner as cars whipped by on Highway 99, today everyone was aligned on one goal: To ensure our neighborhoods have genuinely improved traffic (auto, truck, bike, pedestrian) flow and access to, around and near the north entrance to the deep bore tunnel.

The 21st Century tunnel will impact our entire city and state for generations. The process has been long and hard, and we’re not done. Our area will see construction for nearly a decade and there are many decisions not yet made. But a nice walk around lower Queen Anne helped put a passionate, engaged, insightful group of community activists and leaders in a good mood for the challenges to come.